Fantasy league gives new meaning to all-star lineup

With the new season of fantasy football beginning, one might wonder if those who are not sports enthusiasts will get a chance to indulge in fantasy games that suit their interests. It seems as though someone has already thought of an idea.

A new form of fantasy game known as Tabloid Fantasy League (TABFL) is now available from the company FABFAM. This online game is the tabloid reader’s equivalent of fantasy football. Players log on to www.tabloidfantasyleague.com and mix and match celebrities in an attempt to predict which stars will make the cover of the nation’s best-selling tabloid magazines each week.

Tabloid Fantasy League is a combination of two games: FaceFecta and TabFecta.

According to a press release, FaceFecta, the simpler of the two games, was derived from horse racing’s “trifecta” – in which players pick the winners of three races.

Players of FaceFecta log in each week and guess which celebrities will make the cover of People, Us Weekly, In Touch, and Star. If a player guesses all four correctly, he/she score a FaceFecta and win a prize.

TabFecta is a game similar to fantasy football. According to FABFAM spokesmanBreht Burri, TabFecta lets each player draft and manage his or her own fantasy team of 12 celebrities. The team consists of a model, a musician, two actors, two men and six wildcard choices.

Once a week, players manage their teams by selecting eight celebrities from their 12 choices to be on the “red-carpet playing field,” Burri said.

Team drafts and cover picks are chosen by midnight Tuesday, right before the weekly tabloids appear on newsstands. Staffers at TABFL calculate the correct appearances in the four magazines and add up the points. FaceFecta winners are announced Friday and results are posted for TabFecta players Saturday.

Celebrity watching is certainly an American pastime – if not an obsession – and companies invest millions every year on celebrity ads. But students have varying opinions on the idea of a Web site devoted to celebrity watching.

“To be honest, I think the entire concept is a rather disappointing representation of what our society has become: obsessed with others, as their own lives are too dull to entertain,” sophomore Justin Ray said.

Other students find TABFL a little too simplistic; something for people with too much time on their hands.

“Tabloid Fantasy League seems like a good concept, but I think you can just go online to a gossip page, read some stories and make a very good guess on who will be on the cover next week,” junior Jennifer Vu said.

Those who are interested in signing up or are simply curious can log on to www.tabfl.com. Signing up and playing is free.